Some people go to the Decatur Book Festival to wait in line to see authors, (like the queue to see Ron Rash, bottom of page) others go take their children to expose them to written word and have their face painted, but I like to watch people search for books like these intense bibliophiles in front of the library.
I did most of my book shopping at the Georgia Antiquarian Book Association's (GABA) Fair, which was located in the First Baptist Church gymnasium (shown left). This was a return for GABA who had not been to the festival for several years.
Ironically, my only purchase was from the Dekalb History Center booth near the Old Courthouse where I bought a thin copy of The Battle of Decatur, July 22, 1864 (2003) a small pamphlet written by Albert Rauber. I am becoming more and more interested in the history of Decatur especially events that happened near my doorstep. One unique aspect of the book is that it comes with a mylar map overlay that you can place over a page showing a 1860s map, which gives the reader a sense of where the battle took place in relation to current Decatur landmarks.
Later at the GABA booth I was chatting with Ken Beebe one of the vendors of history books ( had a gorgeous set of Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy hardbacks), who observed that he could see e-readers being popular with fiction, but with history books -- and especially those with maps -- he didn't see how the e-book could replace paper. Especially the ability to stick your finger in the book and flip back and forth between map and text with ease. I never thought about it until then, but he's correct. Another history lesson from the Decatur Book Festival (#dbf2015).
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